"Solar flare activity is increasing and is expected to peak between 2012 and 2014 - around the time some believe the Mayan calendar ends. Astrophysicists believe the flares will destroy 75-90% of all satellites, bringing Earth's communication infrastructure to a halt. The sun will kick out a coronal mass ejection, or CME, which carries billions of tons of charged particles into space. When these mammoth clouds enter the Earth's atmosphere, they will cause power grids to go down and scramble electronic gadgets. Life as we know it will be set back two hundred years."

Walker:F*ck you. it's pronounced "Your anus" and there are also 9 planets in our solar system. Stop with the revisionist bullsh*t.

I like to take an inclusive view of planets, which would give us 13 planets around the solar system. Besides the eight recognized by the IAU, we should be including Ceres, Pluto, Haumea, Makemake, and Eris

oryx:Who has these "misconceptions"? I have never heard of even one of them!

Well, I worked for several years for a company making astronomy equipment for research and the consumer. I am now living abroad pursuing a degree in astronomy.

People are absolutely clueless when it comes to astronomy.

You would imagine however that amateur astronomy would be full of geeks, and nerds, and egg heads, and a lot of smart people.

However, you would be wrong. Rednecks abound. I would say less than 15-20% of the customer base had a college education. Most calls would begin with "I'm just a big dummeh"

Our CSRs would talk about some great calls they got. Many, many people wanted to get a telescope that would be able to see the flag on the moon. They could not comprehend why they couldn't. We had a guy tell us he would finance the development of a filter that would see through the constant fog at his house. He was rich. He couldn't understand why this was impossible.

People didn't even understand that you can't view a constellation with a telescope. People wanted to watch meteor showers through a telescope.

There is just a lack of general understanding of the way things work around them.

/Oh god, come August the Mars email hoax would go around every year, and our sales would tick up.

I can see most of these as being simple misunderstandings of how celestial objects move or operate, especially the brightness of the moon in different phases, but that people really expected to see anything in the sky other than cloud cover on a cloudy day was too much for me. Just, how?

Walker: F*ck you. it's pronounced "Your anus" and there are also 9 planets in our solar system. Stop with the revisionist bullsh*t.

I like to take an inclusive view of planets, which would give us 13 planets around the solar system. Besides the eight recognized by the IAU, we should be including Ceres, Pluto, Haumea, Makemake, and Eris

That's an acceptable view, but as Neil DeGrasse Tyson said in his book The Pluto Files (paraphrased) you have to look at why you define things as you do. In a scientific sense, classifying something as a planet versus a planetoid/moon/etc should mean something about the objects it includes. It should describe certain characteristics that they all share.

So they went to the IAU and asked everyone what the definition of planet should mean. The responses they got excluded Pluto as a planet, as well as excluding the other objects you mentioned because they simply didn't have enough in common with what astronomers and astrophysicists defined as being a planet.

It's an interesting book to read, if you're an astro-geek like myself, and have a man-crush on Neil DeGrasse Tyson.

I TA'ed a few section of Astronomy 1001 and was floored at how many college students didn't know that the moon was up during the day. I guess they weren't science majors so it's sort of understandable, but some people even thought I was lying or trying to trick them or something.

error 303:I TA'ed a few section of Astronomy 1001 and was floored at how many college students didn't know that the moon was up during the day. I guess they weren't science majors so it's sort of understandable, but some people even thought I was lying or trying to trick them or something.

Yeah, it's amazing how ignorant some people are of our own solar system and how it works.

I'm trying to find the link to the video of the French version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire where 56% of the audience polled thinks the Sun revolves around the Earth, but all the links I find have been removed due to copyright bullshiat.

BurnShrike:error 303: I TA'ed a few section of Astronomy 1001 and was floored at how many college students didn't know that the moon was up during the day. I guess they weren't science majors so it's sort of understandable, but some people even thought I was lying or trying to trick them or something.

Yeah, it's amazing how ignorant some people are of our own solar system and how it works.

I'm trying to find the link to the video of the French version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire where 56% of the audience polled thinks the Sun revolves around the Earth, but all the links I find have been removed due to copyright bullshiat.

Well have you never been outside during the day. The sun clearly moves across the sky, ergo, sun rotates around the earth.

"The standard way to pronounce Uranus among astronomers is to put the emphasis on the first syllable "ur" and then say the second part "unus". This is the standard literary pronunciation. The more common way people have pronounced it is u-ra-nus, with the "ra" sounded like "ray".Source (new window)

NobleHam:Jake Havechek: Pluto isn't a farking planet, look at it's orbit for chrissakes. There's at least 3 or 4 other Pluto size rocks zooming around at the edge of the solar system.

Dwarf planets are planets too.

Yes and no.

Basically Planets need to meet 3 scientific criteria.

1. It must be in orbit around the host star2. Gravity must of compressed it into an approximately spherical shape.3. It must dominate the mass of it's orbit. Basically the sum total mass of all the things it's ever likely to hit is not comparable to the object itself.

Dwarf Planets, such as Pluto, fail the 3rd criteria. So that means they aren't considered planets in a scientific sense.

However this violates the precedent set by other astronomical objects. After all a dwarf star is still a star and a dwarf galaxy is still a galaxy.

So are they planets or not? The truth is as long as you recognize Pluto and the other Dwarf Planets as being in a distinct category from the terrestrial and gas giant plants, the answer is ultimately meaningless from a scientific perspective.

BurnShrike:error 303: I TA'ed a few section of Astronomy 1001 and was floored at how many college students didn't know that the moon was up during the day. I guess they weren't science majors so it's sort of understandable, but some people even thought I was lying or trying to trick them or something.

Yeah, it's amazing how ignorant some people are of our own solar system and how it works.

I'm trying to find the link to the video of the French version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire where 56% of the audience polled thinks the Sun revolves around the Earth, but all the links I find have been removed due to copyright bullshiat.

It's less the knowledge of the solar system working even and more just the fact that these were adults who had never looked up at the sky during the day and seen the moon. Or who had never thought about what a solar eclipse is. I'll readily agree that there's a lot of stuff I don't know that maybe an English major thinks I should, but this is something that they could literally see with their own eyes at any time and people just... don't.

oryx:Who has these "misconceptions"? I have never heard of even one of them!

This!I doubt that a majority of the population is even smart enough to ask these questions. Most people don't know what causes the farking moon phases let alone anything about the vernal equinox. I just had a conversation the other day about this with the president of the local astronomy club. I told him about a DVD I'd seen a number of years ago where graduating seniors at Harvard thought that the earth was closer to the sun in the summer and that the earth's shadow caused the moon phases... really scary.